Shade of Aran
The Shade of Aran is a boss in the abandoned tower of Karazhan. He is the spirit of Nielas Aran. He is located in the Guardian's Library, which is a small, circular room (about 45 yards in diameter), with one door that closes and locks as soon as the fight begins. After Aran's dead a teleport to his room becomes available from Berthold the Doorman, and all trash mobs from the Curator to Aran (exc. one pack outside Illhoof's door), will cease to respawn. The packs above his library are linked to Netherspite. Abilities * ~900k HP * very low armor * Immune to Mind Numbing Poison and Curse of Tongues Basic Spells * Frostbolt - 3 sec cast, ~ 4400 frost damage and 4 sec slow * Fireball - 3 sec cast, ~ 4400 fire damage * Arcane Missiles - 5 sec channeled, 5x1500 arcane damage (7500 total) * Chains of Ice - 10 second Root, does not break on damage. Dispellable. * Slow - Reduces movement and melee attack speed by a considerable amount for 10 seconds * AoE Counterspell - 10 yard radius AoE around Aran, occurs very often. Locks out schools of magic for 6 sec. All of Aran's basic spells have infinite range (even through walls, they hit anywhere in the instance) and are semi-randomly targeted (he will usually keep nuking a target that's low on HP). It is possible to interrupt and lock out his basic abilities (with Counterspell/Pummel/Earth Shock etc.), up to the point where he starts to use his weak melee attack. He rarely takes a swing even when not all his schools are locked. When meleeing, he uses a normal aggro table (and often will attack a rogue or warrior in melee range). All slowing and root effects are dispellable (magic), and can be broken by the usual methods. Special Abilities Every 30-35 seconds, Aran uses one of his three special abilities (never the same twice in a row). The special abilities cannot be interrupted or locked out, and they are real killers. * Flame Wreath - 5 sec cast which creates a fiery aura (which lasts 15 sec) around 3 random people in the raid. When the auras are triggered, they will deal 3-4k fire damage to everyone in the room. * Blizzard - 1700 damage per second, large AoE that moves slowly clockwise around the room * Magnetic Pull / Super Arcane Explosion - Pulls everyone to the center of the room, followed by a 10 second cast that will deal 9,000-11,000 aoe damage in a 20 yard radius. Water Elementals At 40% HP, the Shade of Aran summons 4 Elite Water Elementals with ~10,000 HP. They will despawn after 90 seconds, and shoot a constant stream of Waterbolts for 1000-2000~ damage. Regenerate Mana When the Shade of Aran gets down to 20% mana or less (about 30k), he will do an emote, Polymorph the entire raid, conjure some water, and start drinking. After about 10 seconds, the polymorph will break and he'll do an AoE Pyroblast right thereafter. If Aran is interrupted while drinking, he will simply use a Potion and Pyroblast. The Pyroblast does 7000-7500 damage to each raid member. If Aran reaches 20% mana again after the first Mass Polymorph, he will not polymorph and pyroblast again, he will just drink a potion and continue. Shadows of Aran After 15(?) minutes, he will call Shadows of Aran which will cause a wipe. Strategy The problem in this fight is that the whole raid must learn to avoid damage. The Shade of Arans basic attacks are not very dangeous, but the special attacks are deadly. Each raid member must pay attention which attack is upcoming, nobody can sit back and just do their usual routine. Once everybody learns how to move (or when not to move), the fight actually becomes rather easy. In order to avoid the Magnetic Pull/Arcane Explosion everybody must run to the outer wall of the room, the Blizzard forces people towards the center (or the other side of the room), and Flame Wreath inhibits movement. Beyond this, casters want to stay outside the AoE silence and classes with spell interrupt abilities want to concentrate on what he's casting. The encounter cannot be reset, corpse runs are not possible during the fight because the door is locked. Gear Aggro is of almost no relevance, because Aran choses his targets semi-randomly, thus the tanks should don DPS gear. If the raid choses not to interrupt arcane missles, some arcane resistance can be useful. Everyone in the group should strive for at least 8k HP after buffs, more is better. Even healers and ranged DPS must be able to survive a wave of arcane missles (7k), and everybody must be able to survive the pyroblast (7.5k). Interrupts The raid should agree on a general strategy - it is either possible to have Aran conserve his mana (so that the ploymorph/pyroblast perhaps doesn't occur), or to have him burn it quickly, so that the polymorph clearly occurs before the water elementals. If the raid doesn't have a very large and adept amount of interrupts, the usual procedure is to keep two schools locked out, and allow him to freely cast the third one. If Aran is supposed to conserve mana, it is recommended to interrupt and lock out Fireball and Frostbolt, and let him freely cast Arcane Missiles. If he should burn his mana quickly, it's better to lock Frostbolt and Arcane Missile, and let the Fireballs uninterrupted. Interrupts on Fireballs and Frost bolts should occur near the end of their casting time, because he expends mana only at the end of the cast and he will be doing nothing else for nearly 2s. Arcane Missiles should be interrupted early, as he spends the mana upfront and thus they will cause less damage. It is useful to assign each player with an interrupt ability one type of spell which he should take care of, this avoids everybody interrupting the same spell, and then have the abilities on cooldown for the next one. Blizzard This effect resembles a less damaging C'Thun dark glare. It is a ray from Aran to the wall of the room, which slowly moves through half the room (180°), leaving an AoE behind. It will hit people meleeing Aran on the side it's traveling on. It is pointless to run from it clockwise along the wall (because it will cause a slow debuff), escape attempts should always be made either counter-clockwise or across the room through Aran. For spellcasters this means that they will be inside the AoE counterspell for some time, but that can't be helped. The AoE is led by a small blue cloud which moves along the wall. Flame Wreath If Flame Wreath is upcoming, the whole raid must immediately stop moving (even if this would mean staying in a Blizzard), simple as that. People must wait until the auras are clearly visible, and may only move again when they are sure they will in no way come near one of them. The effect is triggered in particular by the following: * all forms of player movement, including sitting down, standing up or turning * Paladins bubble * Rogues Cloak of Shadows * accepting a ressurection * Mages Blink * Pets The following will not trigger the effect: * Spell casting * Movement resulting from a spell cast (like Mind Flay) * Nether Protection Magnetic Pull / Arcane Explosion Prior to this, Aran will always cast an AoE slow. If everybody starts immediately running right after the magnetic pull (no turning around, just run!), even slowed people can reach the wall before the explosion. The slow can be broken by PvP trinkets, Rogues' Cloak of Shadows, Druids' Shapeshift, Warlocks' Spellstone, Paladins' Blessing of Freedom, and Gnomes' Escape Artist. Aspect of Cheetah/Pack will also help. Mages can blink to an edge and use the extra time for an evocate (just don't blink into a blizzard!). Priests and Paladins should keep an eye out for slow reactions (or anyone in "Chains of Ice"), since the slowing effects can be dispelled. Warriors should use Intervene to quickly run to a raid member at the edge of the room. Water Elementals A Warlock is invaluable here, because the Water Elementals can be banished and feared, and are susceptible to Curse of Tongues. The adds should be tanked and nuked ASAP. It helps a lot if the tank wears frost resistance gear. The elementals have roughly 13k HP as of the newest patch, so they can be burned down very easily. Because of this, having a warlock in the group is not as important as before. Regenerate Mana If the raids DPS are high enough, and the interrupts work well, this phase does not neccessarily occur. If it does occur, the healers have to be on their toes to very quickly heal the raid after the Pyroblast (preferrably using AoE heals). The polymorph breaks a very short time before the pyroblast, so it is possible to cast some protections (Priest shield, HoTs, Paladin bubble, Mage fire ward, fire resistance totems etc.) right before the Pyroblast. After the blast, raid members should use health potions and Healthstones to heal quickly. This polymorph effect also works on characters who normally are immune to polymorph, such as druids. However, a druid in Tree of Life form will not be polymorphed, so a raid can have him cast Lifebloom on as many people as he can in anticipation of the AoE Pyroblast. A big problem associated with the polymorph/pyroblast is that it frequently occurs close to the summoning of the water elementals. This must be avoided, because the water elementals are deadly right after the Pyroblast. DPS needs to slow down or speed up if it appears they are likely to happen close together. Loot Quotes Aggro *"Please, no more! My son... he's gone mad!" *"Who are you? What do you want? Stay away from me!" *"I will not be tortured again!" Flame Wreath *"Burn you hellish fiends!" *"I'll show you this beaten dog still has some teeth!" Blizzard *"Back to the cold dark with you!" *"I'll freeze you all!" Arcane Explosion *"Yes, yes, my son is quite powerful... but I have powers of my own!" *"I am not some simple jester! I am Nielas Aran!" Low Mana / AoE Pyroblast *"Surely you would not deny an old man a replenishing drink? No, no I thought not." Summon Water Elementals *"I'm not finished yet! No, I have a few more tricks up me sleeve." Player Death *"Torment me no more!" *"I want this nightmare to be over!" Aran's enrage *"You've wasted enough of my time... let these games be finished!" Aran's death *"At last... The nightmare is.. over..." is equipped by a raid member *"Where did you get that?! Did HE send you??" External Links Category:Ghosts Category:Humans Category:Bosses Category:Instance:Karazhan